With His own life-blood He seals this Covenant between God and man.
He offers up His own body as the first-fruits of this great kingdom
of self-sacrifice. He takes poor fishermen and mechanics, and sends
them forth to acquaint all men with the good news that God is their
King, and to baptize them as subjects of that kingdom, bound to rise
in baptism to a new life, a life of love, and brotherhood, and self-
sacrifice, like His own. He commands them to call all nations to
that sacred Feast wherein there is neither rich nor poor, but the
same bread and the same wine are offered to the monarch and to the
slave, as signs of their common humanity, their common redemption,
their common interest--signs that they derive their life, their
health, their reason, their every faculty of body, soul, and spirit,
from One who walked the earth as the son of a poor carpenter, who ate
and drank with publicans and sinners. He sends down His Spirit on
them with gifts of language, eloquence, wisdom, and healing, as mere
earnests and first-fruits; so they said, of that prophecy that He
would pour out His Spirit upon all flesh, even upon slaves and
handmaids. And these poor fishermen feel themselves impelled by a
divine and irresistible impulse to go forth to the ends of the world,
and face persecution, insult, torture, and death--not in order that
they may make themselves lords over mankind, but that they may tell
them that One is their Master, even Jesus Christ, both God and man--
that HE rules the world, and will rule it, and CAN rule it, that in
His sight there is no distinction of race, or rank, or riches,
neither Jew nor Greek, barbarian, Scythian, bond or free.
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